THE PLACE TO GO WHEN YOU CAN'T GO BACKPACKING

What’s In Your Day Bag – Skye Hansen?

You’re not always hiking and backpacking, as much as you wish you were. What’s in the bag – your day bag – the one that gets you from home to work to the trail, or from kids to soccer to weekend getaway, that makes it easy to move from here to there. This begins a series from some SBM contributors that answers that question. So what’s in your day bag?

From Work to Bike to Hike to Dance – Skye Hansen

Tell us about your survival kit.
This is actually a transferable go-bag. I find that I do a lot of activities where I need the same sort of tools in each. After a while I decided any uni-taskers (tools that I only need for one activity) could stay stored with that activity (for example, I store bungie cords in my motorcycle saddlebags and breath mints in my dance bag), but there was a small subset of multi-tasker tools that were useful across the board. They all fit in a gallon ziplock and then gets transferred as needed from saddle bag to dance bag to work bag to my daylight-short-hike bag. The whole thing weighs in at 2 lbs 12 oz.
What are your 10 essentials? From the photo, from top to bottom and left to right, I have: 1) waterproofs [2-piece rain coat and pants], 2) utility knife, 3) paracord, 4) eating kit (sporks and a small knife), 5) first aid kit [including personal medication], 6) dance kit [$20, socks and 2 hair ties], 7) tool kit [altoids-style container with a swiss army knife, multi tool, eye glass tools], 8) clean-up kit [a couple of paper towels and plastic bag], 9) getting lost kit [lights, compass, whistle], and 10) hand towel [as Douglas Adams once said, “A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”]What are the most frequently used items in your kit?
The sporks (at least once a week I get to the office and realize that I have no utensils to eat my lunch with), the clean-up kit (good for trash cleanup, food napkins, makeshift toilet paper), and the hair ties. I love having my little tin of tools though, and often pull out the multi-tool at the office to use the pliers or screwdriver.If you could add one more thing, what would it be?
I’m currently looking at adding some sort of tape to my kit (probably gaffers tape). From a dance perspective we often put tape on the soles of our shoes to make them more slick, and from a biking and hiking perspective you can never have too much tape.

Skye is a hobbyist photographer who fell in with the wrong crowd. A
few years ago she was invited on her first car camping trip which was
so enjoyable that before she knew it she was hiking more, camping
regularly, and occasionally backpacking. She now spends her time
obsessing over what magical combination of equipment would enable her
to more easily achieve all of the above.
Her favorite part about camping has always been toasted marshmallows,
experimenting with a new s'mores combination, and coming home to that
first shower.